Once you've captured something, you have to process it and put it in the right place so you can use it. That's the organizing stage.
People probably differ on what they consider "work sense" to be. For me, it's how quickly and accurately you can organize. Someone who isn't good at their job often can't tell, whatever they're told, whether it's information they need, information to throw away, or, if they do need it, how. Because they can't tell, everything may feel important. Digesting it all can be overwhelming.
The arts and athletics probably don't demand much organizing skill. Knowledge workers are different. Early in your career at a company, handling the tasks you're given may be enough. But the more senior you get, the more contexts and information come your way. If you run your own shop or business, there's even more to keep track of. And the higher you climb into management, the more a lack of organizing skill drags you down. Nobody wants to be the boss or owner who can't understand what people tell them and can't make decisions. So organizing is an extremely important skill.
Organizing looks like a matter of knack. In reality, that's only because people never think of building the skill. But organizing is a skill you can master. Let me go over a few principles of organizing. These principles are fundamental ones that apply to everything from tidying a room to managing information, and even to software architecture. I drew heavily on Daniel J. Levitin's The Organized Mind.
Not organizing is better than organizing wrongly
When my mom tidies my room, it comes out clean, but I can't find anything. By her standards, she probably sorted things neatly by type. I, on the other hand, would have kept the things I use often close at hand. The books I read often and the tools I use would be on my desk. This "gap in organizing criteria" is why I can't find things. In this sense, wrong organizing is worse than not organizing at all. If she'd left it alone, things would have ended up naturally where I needed them.
Rather than inventing new criteria for no good reason, it's better to use the ones that already exist. That is, don't add categories lightly. Put another way: 쪼갤까 말까 할 때는 쪼개지 마라. Applied to managing information and materials, it means don't create folders without a specific reason. When people first start using a notes app, they create folders for every topic. That leaves them with folders that hold no notes, or only a few. Before long, they stop using them. All you've done is create cluttered folders.
For developers, the principle of not splitting things lightly applies to software architecture too. Rather than splitting services without knowing what you're doing, split them when you have a clear criterion. A misguided MSA adoption just multiplies the interfaces you have to consider between services, which drives up design and maintenance costs. During the COVID years, plenty of companies probably adopted MSA prematurely through résumé-driven development. And some people probably struggled to sort out the mess. (The Real Motive Behind "Growth": The Ability to Turn Things into Projects)
So not adding categories lightly is a principle that applies to any kind of classification. Excessive, wrong organizing is poison. Classify only when you have a particular purpose or a real need. There's no need to get clever and split things prematurely.
If you can't use it, don't hold on to it
Marie Kondo is a famous Japanese organizing consultant, known for the line "If it doesn't spark joy, discard it." What matters is holding only what you can influence. That seems true not just of productivity but of life. If you hear a rumor that the Earth will be destroyed in 100 years, there's nothing you can do about it. That's an extreme example, but a lot of information is like this "Earth-destruction rumor." There's nothing I can do about it. That's probably why Nassim Taleb told people not to watch the news. It's noise. (I don't mean you should be entirely indifferent to current affairs.)
"If you can't use it, don't hold on to it" is a principle most people already know, so let me turn to a slightly different topic.
This is my own biased preconception, but among people who talk a lot about politics at work, or who are great at trivia, I've never seen anyone with outstanding ability. (There are surely counterexamples, of course.) People's total capabilities are pretty much the same to begin with. Invest in one thing, and you lose out on another. You'd be busy enough just taking in the information that's useful to you, so focusing on politics you can't change or on useless trivia is a loss by that much. I'm not saying politics has nothing to do with life. It's closely tied to it. But whether you can take action is a different matter. Only the scale differs; it's the same as the Earth-destruction example from a moment ago.
You need to quickly work out how captured information is useful to you. And if it isn't, throw it away right then. If a source only brings in information you don't need, discard the source. That's why you delete pointless communities, social media, and so on. The same goes for studying: invest in what you can actually use, rather than digging into this and that out of FOMO. Focus on acquiring information that will actually get used.
If you say, "I can't give up taking in useless information. It's too much fun," then make it useful. I'd like the people who make political remarks at work to at least do party activism. If you have clear views on politics and a strong interest in it, shouldn't you naturally exert some influence on the world?
For getting work done, organizing around 'action' matters
Getting work done means executing. To execute, information, materials, and tasks must be organized around action. In that respect, GTD and PARA are useful tools, and they pair well together. The key mindset GTD teaches is asking "What is the next action?", and PARA classifies information by action. GTD and PARA offer workable criteria for classifying "tasks" and "information" by action.
I work at what is probably the most chaotic mobility company in Korea. I'm a developer, and my team was recently merged with another, so I'm extremely busy. I use several languages, and I have to handle frontend, backend, and infrastructure. There are many services to look after, and circumstances change often. On top of that, writing a book, the newsletter, and speaking engagements all overlap, and it's driving me crazy. Lately I've also had a lot of hospital visits. (That's why I haven't been able to upload videos to YouTube these days.)
When such varied work and information are pouring in like crazy, what shines is knowing how the work and information given to me are useful to me. The moment something is captured, the judgment has to come out instantly: Is this tied to a project (Project)? Does it relate to a service I'm responsible for (Area)? Is it information to keep in mind (Resource)? And if it's a task, how will I break it down, and what's the next action? A truly good productivity method shines when you're at your busiest. I'm not emphasizing GTD and PARA as empty words with no accountability.